Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'brahma-bhuya' as becoming Brahman itself, the very state of being Brahman, which is liberation. The transcending of the gunas is the cancelling of them by the seeing of non-duality, and the ascetic or the doer of action who serves the Lord present in the heart of all beings is made fit for actual identity with Brahman. One source pictures the ripening of meditation in which, at the end, even sattva is sublated and the citta is subtilized, so that what remains is the bare state of Brahman. The Lord served here is Narayana who, through maya, has come to appear as the field-knower, yet is in truth the supreme bliss; devotion is the means, but the goal named is the non-dual Brahman-state, liberation.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here 'brahma-bhuya' is read as the candidate's attaining of the self as it truly is, immortal and undecaying, in likeness to Brahman rather than as bare identity. The Lord, supremely compassionate, an ocean of tender love for those who take refuge in Him, is served by single-pointed devotion that goes to nothing else; He then lifts the devotee above the gunas, which are hard to pass beyond. One source glosses the becoming-Brahman as becoming-like-Brahman in the sense of attaining the Lord's sadharmya, a sharing in His likeness, and stresses that even the transcendence of the gunas is not a guna-fight but the bhakti-discipline already taught in the twelfth chapter.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators reject reading 'brahma-bhuya' as supreme Brahmanhood, holding such a reading contrary to scriptural authority since one thing cannot become another. They take 'Brahman' here to mean not the supreme Lord but prakriti, the great Brahman called the Lord's womb in this very chapter ('my womb is the great Brahman'). 'Becoming Brahman' then means becoming dear to the Lord as that prakriti is dear, not identity with it. And the dearness of the one beyond the gunas is not merely equal to prakriti's; the Padma is cited that none is as dear to Hari as Rama, so degrees of dearness are preserved. The grammar of 'bhuya' (state of becoming) is worked out at length to support 'becoming dear like Brahman.'

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse in its full Bhagavata force: the gunatita and the avyabhicari-bhakta are one and the same person. Gunatitatva is not achieved by some other sadhana and then crowned by devotion; it is devotion itself, in its undeviating form, that carries one across. One source argues from 'I am to be grasped by devotion alone' that the experience of Brahman comes by no other means, and that since the renunciation of knowledge and action is heard of but the renunciation of devotion is nowhere heard, devotion alone is the truly 'unswerving' way; the devotee becomes free of the gunas from the very beginning of practice, whereas the knower must first complete knowledge and give up his sattvic state. Another (a Gaudiya source) holds that even in liberation the distinction of natures abides, so 'becoming Brahman' means attaining one's own proper nature endowed with the eight qualities, becoming similar to Brahman, not identical with the Lord. A Marathi source, by contrast, sings full non-dual identity: the universe is wholly the Lord as brilliance is the gem and liquidity is water; unswerving devotion is to see oneself one with this all-inclusive Lord, like a ripple not distinct from the sea or salt dissolved into it, so that the soul merges in Supreme Spirit and the Brahmic state becomes its very own.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators place the Pustimarga centre of the whole chapter at this verse. Of the two portraits of the gunatita the chapter has drawn, the jnana-marg portrait of the earlier verses and the bhakti-marg portrait here, only this second one names a single active means, the avyabhicarini bhakti-yoga. This is the Pustimarga's own bhava: undivided, motiveless, all-self-given love of Krishna the Purushottama, a sneha-yoga of love that the gunas cannot bind because it is itself the inflow of His pushti-grace. The avyabhicarini-bhakti-saying is itself the primary point; the 'brahma-bhuya' that crowns it, glossed as the akshara-brahma-bhava or the standing in the Lord's own presence, is its incidental yield.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads 'cha' as emphasis ('he who serves Me alone') in order to set aside the devotee who serves with an eye to some fruit, who holds the Lord as a subordinate part and the fruit as the principal thing; such devotion is precisely the one that 'strays' (vyabhichara), because it has set its trust on the fruit. The truly unswerving devotee longs for no fruit at all. Even when pressed with 'why do you keep up this empty thing?', his inner organ melted by the unceasing piercing of devotion, his hair bristling, his body trembling, tears streaming from his wide-open eyes, he answers by mere silence. He alone is made pure by unswerving devotion, which is the foremost power of the great Lord and no other.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators present the verse as resolving an apparent tension: how can the trigunatita state, which seems to belong to the Samkhya or knowledge path, be reached by bhakti-yoga, which includes action? The answer is that exclusive devotion itself yields the knowledge of the Self, won through the Lord's grace, and so carries one beyond the gunas to liberation. One source unfolds the verse as upasaka, upasya and upasana (worshipper, worshipped, and worship): 'avyabhichara' rules out every other refuge, even that of jnana-yoga or karma-yoga, and bhakti-yoga places the whole weight on the Lord alone, so that the surrendered devotee does not cross the gunas by his own effort but has the crossing done through him by the Lord's grace. The same reality reached by knowledge and by action is reached by devotion; the sadhanas differ, the attainment does not, and devotion is singled out because it asks neither the strenuous discernment of the jnani nor the ceaseless renunciation of the karma-yogi, but only that one give refuge to no one but the Lord.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas